Sunday, March 31, 2013

Something About Just Desserts...

Last night, our friends Jay and Marcy came over for dinner.

4 adults, 7 kids, 1 baby, and 1 wiener dog between us.

We started out with some veg and Mad's Fave Ranch Dip...

And after the evening ended too soon and the house was quiet once again, I realized that was the first time in 6 years, almost half of Joey's and Maddi's lifetimes ago, that I was able to open up my own home - to our friends and their family, with my entire family intact, happy and healthy, and in place - and enjoy it the way a home was meant to be enjoyed - with the sharing of laughter, fun, space, stories, things to eat and things to drink in the company of people we not only love, but whom we like and whose company truly enriches us and lifts our spirits.

...and really sweet blueberries that tasted like candy.

Five years after I signed those papers in which I chose to relinquish two houses and my right to freely access all of the material things I earned over thirteen years housed within them, my rights to support undeniably earned and deserved - specially in my incapacitated state at the time, and most painfully, the legal say so over my children, for whom I was the primary caretaker until the events that precipitated my divorce. Five years after I'd learned that I squandered my friendship on people who were all too eagerly waiting, and for a LONG fucking time, to first patronize, then kick me when I was down.

Some said it was too much to give up. That I was crazy not to fight harder for more.

Then we moved on to some Hoisin Roast Chicken...

But even in my mentally diminished state, or maybe to some degree because of it, I realized that I had to release myself from all my opponent would attach to in order to be free from the control he'd try to exert over me, the control legally afforded him by my temporary mental illness, through those attachments.

Because maybe that mental "illness" made me just crazy enough to believe that what was truly mine, Karma and Cosmos would return to me without me having to surrender my dignity in addition to everything else I'd given up in order to reclaim it, provided I kept my head, heart and hand in the right place.

...and assorted grilled meats in tubular form.

And what was mine to have, if I was willing to earn it, was a happy, healthy, whole family in a happy, healthy, loving home, with a meaningful network of good friends with whom to share our lives.

And one of the Monsters' favorite salads...

The ongoing work? Honest knowledge of self, constant vigilance over intentions, doing what I know is right for me and my family regardless of how others might perceive it, and the frequent balancing of my needs and wants to the needs and wants of those around me, the hardest task being the one in which you acknowledge and accept your own hand in your own misery. In which you recognize those things about who you are and the choices you've made that brought those people and events you'd rather not take credit for, into your life. In which you truly determine that you are not, and will not be, a victim.

Love it when all the food gets eaten, all the drinks
get drunk, and everyone goes (or stays) home
HAPPY. :)

I earned that perfect moment with my family and friends last night. But you know what? I earned that other thing too. The good news is that if it took me 13 years to earn, and learn from, that other thing, it took me less than half that time to get it (much, MUCH) righter. ;)

shinae

Thursday, March 28, 2013

On Sheryl Sandberg and Sitting at that Other Kind of Table...

I started out writing about how the child has not let me write for the past two weeks and how frustrated that was making me, but then I realized what a poor use that was of the very precious time I am being given at this very moment at 4:30 in the AM to scrape a few words off my tongue...

And what I really want to talk about is Sheryl Sandberg. Or at least the buzz phrases and concepts that have been swirling about her for the past couple of months.

To be clear, I don't want to be Sheryl Sandberg. She occupies a kind of space in the business world in which I've been able to partially participate but bear fairly full witness to over the years  - a high powered and aggressively driven kind of space where people, still mostly male, endeavor to move and shake things while wearing expensive suits and coordinating projects and "managing" people and creating deadlines (some of them legitimate) and power lunching and posturing and maneuvering and constantly seeking ways to be more productive, more efficient, more effective and sometimes doing really great things that benefit humanity in the process, sometimes not...

But if you handed me Sandberg's job and salary on a platter along with a chip that held the knowledge to do that job effectively that I could implant in the back of my neck at will, I'd probably go to facebook to see if anyone would be willing to trade me that platter for an all expense paid three month visit to certain parts of Europe (France and Spain mostly) for me and my family.

(Well, actually, if I really wanted to get the job done, I'd post it on G+, but I digress...)

Because my goals are very different from hers in so many ways. For one, she knows what hers are. She's the kind of gal who's got a very impressive bucket list and actually checks things off on it. I can tell by her hairdo. Me, I'm still wondering if I even need a bucket to contain my list once I've actually made it this time around. I'm thinking a shot glass will probably do.

For two, she likes leaning in to a testosterone dominated environment to balance it out with her brand of estrogen. Me, I'm happy to cheer for her on the sidelines because I have walked into enough meetings attended mostly by very serious East Coast corporate types in suits and ties that at some point start literally smelling of dudes sweating to outdo their competition, make more money, and WORLD DOMINATION MUAHAHAHAHAAA and I am powerless not to be knocked into a dead nap by the scent of all that manbition.

I was given many opportunities to lean in, albeit in a different industry and at a lower level, by the very type of progressive male mentor Sandberg says we need so many more of (Roger, you are dearly missed), and I learned over the course of a decade that I really didn't want to and that that wasn't the sphere of influence I was meant to influence.

But I also learned over the course of that decade that there are lots of women who really could have benefited those meetings and by extension the men in those meetings and of course their organizations at large if they had been presented with the same opportunities to lean in and make their contributions freely rather than to have to spend their energy and resources pushing and clawing just to have a chance to sit at the table. Women who by their nature were simply more efficient, more productive, more effective, more nurturing, more encouraging, more supporting, and more inspiring without having to read books about Chinese military tactics and disappearing cheese.

And while I have wondered in the past if Roger squandered that mentorship on me, I'm more inclined to think today that the sphere I choose to influence going forward will benefit from all I learned in that decade - about business, about how men and women function in business, about human nature at large, and about myself. I might also dare to think that the people who crossed my career path in that decade also benefited from my unique energy, thought process, and communication and work styles that I didn't have to suppress my true self or struggle to be able to express.

Not all of us women should be, or even desire to be, in Sandberg's position. And not everything she has to share with us applies to our chosen career paths, whether those paths be at home or office, salaried or not. But her message of balance and equality - in the home, in the work place, in the world at large - is one we can all benefit from leaning into a lot more.

shinae

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Something About Doors Opening & Closing...

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

~ Alexander Graham Bell



Patch o' dirt in our new back yard. :)


This morning's usual food programming was interrupted by a visit to the OB/GYN to confirm our suspicion regarding certain events of earlier this week.

And indeed it is confirmed: I miscarried. And I am otherwise perfectly fine and healthy.


That's it. Nothing major, and nothing minor - a fact of life as sure as pregnancy itself, specially the older we get. And I did turn 40 this year, after all. :)


So while we thought it would be nice for Izzy to have a peer sibling, I also promised myself long ago that my child bearing era would end when I turned 40. And I've learned not to have too many hard and fast rules about Life, but I've also learned that determination and decision are sometimes necessary to achieve certain good things.


Dean and I together have determined and decided that we are done making babies, that we are perfectly happy and grateful that we have three beautiful children between us, that we are going to raise them to be a family even when we're long gone, and that there are lots of things to grow in this here patch of dirt behind our new home, both literal and metaphorical: fruits, vegetables, flowers, travel, goals, and other good dreams.


Thanks always for your support, encouragement and good juju in all we experience and endeavor, peeps.


Looking forward to continuing to share it with you. :)


shinae

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Filling In The Gap & Streamlining...

Quick housekeeping note: If you don't know about my other blog, it might appear that I've neglected to blog for the past month and half, but other than my usual daily food (and other) posts, I actually have been blogging the month leading up to my 40th birthday (among other things), just over there. 

I started that other blog in order to compartmentalize my writing a bit - more food here, more personal stuff over there - and to spare those interested in my food content but not so much my other jibber jabber the tedium of having to read my cheap therapy posts. 

But since that inaugural compost pile post written over a year and half ago, I've come to realize that one of the things I most enjoy about this new career path I'm carving out for myself as one who relates food to life is the blending of personal and professional perspectives. The lack of that non-clinical schizophrenia we've all experienced when trying to divorce our work selves from our deeply personal selves. I am hopeful and optimistic that I won't have to.

So while I won't be shutting the compost pile down anytime soon (because Goddess knows how long it'll take me to migrate those posts over here if ever), I'll just be shoving my extraculinary scraps into a mini compost pile in this here blog because it just feels more efficient, more right, and more me.


Signing off for the morning from my new kitchen office (yes, we've finally moved from the teeny tiny bungalow),

The newly minted 40 year old and once again preggo,

shinae

(There. I'm pretty sure you're all filled in now! :D)